June 23, 2017
On the Week That Wasn’t
and a Few Other Odds and Ends
I had every intention of writing a review this week, but as
with the best of some of our intentions, it just didn’t happen. In fact, the
only movie I watched this week was a mockumentary called Finishing the Game, a Justin Lin film that purports to show the Hollywood
stereotypes that existed when the stunning decision was made to finish Bruce
Lee’s Game of Death with just twelve
minutes of footage of its recently deceased star. I watched it while I was
ironing, and at several points I was more interested in the patterns in the
wrinkles of my shirts than what was going on onscreen. Toward the end of the
film, a studio executive arrives to scream at the unprofessionalism of the
director and casting director, wonder aloud at why the finalists for the role
look nothing like Bruce Lee, and to fire everyone. It was one of the only parts
of the film that piqued my interest.
Also this week, I had this odd thought: Can John McClane
smoke? For that matter, can James Bond or actors such as Michael Douglas,
Nicolas Cage, or John Travolta, all actors that are getting up there in age? I
imagine that as actors age, it becomes increasingly harder for audiences to
separate the actor from the role he is playing. In Michael Douglas’s case, if
we saw him light up in a film, our brains would likely be overwhelmed by
concern for the actor. In other words, we would not have the ability to suspend
disbelief. Years ago, Richard Roeper argued that those pushing to make all
films containing smoking R-rated were wrong, reasoning that what mattered most
was context not content, but does
context have to mean putting actors’ lives at risk?
And here’s a local curiosity. Currently in theaters, there’s
a movie called The Story of Taipei
playing to packed theaters. Here is how the film was described to me: It is
about a group of people with secrets directed by a first-time director who is
also a professor of film. (So far so good.) The film currently has an online
rating of around 5.5, yet audiences seem to like it more than critics. (Certainly
not the first time this has happened.) However, here’s where the description
turns peculiar. The film has been described as poorly written, poorly acted,
and very poorly edited, yet because the director is assumed to know about
film-making and films in general, some moviegoers contend that the film is awful
for a reason, that the director made a subpar film on purpose and that
audiences will only understand why if they see it multiple times. I admit that
the notion is intriguing. Would a director making his directorial debut deliberately
make a bad film, and would h bank his career on modern audiences realizing that
and returning for repeat viewings? I doubt it. Sadly I may never know. Apparently,
The Story of Taipei is another Taiwanese
film not released with English subtitles.
And finally this week brings the fifth Transformers movie,
and it is truly a time to rejoice. This time, apparently, Optimus Prime, like
Dom before him, goes rouge, and, if the trailers are to be believed, Bumblebee
must engage him in battle to determine the fate of his world and ours. At
first, this sounds like a ludicrous plot, but if you think about it, it makes complete
sense. When you have run out of good ideas – and Michael Bay did this many
years ago – the only option is to have a heel turn. Just wait. At some point one
of the Avengers will betray his fellow heroes, only to be revealed to have
noble intentions in the end. Oh wait. They already did this with Captain America: Civil War. But I digress.
It is a time to rejoice, a time to cheer, for at what other time of the year do
we get the kind of terse, sarcastic, frustration-infested reviews that Transformers
films bring out of critics? One masterful one this time around is an uproariously
funny take down from Bilge Ebiri at Village Voice. It’s almost enough to make
me yearn for more tales about the robots in disguise. Almost.
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